


There's No Kingdom To Come

by QuickSilverFox3



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Angst and Feels, Booker makes a brief appearance, Canonical Character Death, Character Death, Character Study, Drowning, Established Relationship, F/F, Gen, Hurt No Comfort, Mental Instability, Minor Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova, Missing Scene, Unreliable Narrator
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-20
Updated: 2020-07-20
Packaged: 2021-03-04 20:08:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 999
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25402102
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/QuickSilverFox3/pseuds/QuickSilverFox3
Summary: Salt water fills her lungs, burns her eyes, chokes her as she tries to scream.Quynh drowns, and she drowns, and she drowns.She beats her hands bloody against the unyielding iron above her, screams out her final breaths to the uncaring ocean, and yet she wakes to find her hands whole and unbroken, her lungs clinging to one final breath of air.
Relationships: Andy | Andromache of Scythia/Quynh | Noriko
Comments: 12
Kudos: 88





	There's No Kingdom To Come

**Author's Note:**

> First fic for this fandom!

Salt water fills her lungs, burns her eyes, chokes her as she tries to scream.

Quynh drowns, and she drowns, and she drowns.

She beats her hands bloody against the unyielding iron above her, screams out her final breaths to the uncaring ocean, and yet she wakes to find her hands whole and unbroken, her lungs clinging to one final breath of air. 

Quynh drowns, and she dies, in total and utter darkness.

Each time she thinks, this will be the last time, just one more time. She clings to the memories of the sun on her skin — blessed warmth in golden light and even in the grey hills of England there was such glorious sunshine — and Quynh prays to whatever gods she had thought abandoned her long ago for her torment to end, for Andy to find her and deliver her from this hell.

But it never ends.

She drowns and dies, and drowns and dies, and drowns and dies again.

For a time — marked by her choking death and never-ending return to life — Quynh waits, suspended in her eternal tomb. She doesn’t fight. She doesn’t scream. She releases her breath and feels it rush past her, bubbles pressing into her skin like a touch that she longs for. Some part of her can escape to the surface, and for a time she was content with that. 

She could die at any time, any death could be her last. Lykon had gasped out his final breath on the desert sand, his blood staining her hands as it had a thousand times before but he didn’t heal. He remained broken and bloody on the ground and she watched his chest for that first inhale. Quynh watched and she waited for something that never happened, her own lungs burning as she held her breath, waiting and waiting. Andromache took her hand gently and led her away as she gasped for breath, sobs choking her as she swallowed down her screams. 

Quynh’s world was darkness and burning salt, breaking her hands against the iron that held her trapped.

When she was dead, she didn’t dream.

She had been so grateful when the dreams had stopped, when they found Nicolo and Yusuf. Their nights returned to peaceful slumber — Andromache’s head tucked beneath her chin, moonlight casting her face in silver and shadow and Nicolo curled into Yusuf’s chest, a distant shadow across the glowing coals of their fire. She was a fool.

Her nights before meeting them — a Crusader in white turned brown from mud and blood, and a merchant called up to fight on the opposite side but devastating all the same — had been filled with the same scenes of battlefields Quynh had seen a thousand times before. 

Dust churned up by the tread of uncountable soldiers, ground turned to mud as it thirsted for blood willingly split by men who didn’t know what they were offering. The moans of the dying mingling with the birds eager to feast and not caring if the meat beneath their talons screamed when they tore into it. Survivors blinking into a weak dawn as if unable to realise what they had done, gazing across a world forever changed for them. In the centre, two men, locked in conflict again and again and again. 

She missed those dreams now. They had been proof there were others out there, a solace before Andromache had found her, but now they haunted her in their absence. 

How many times had she died now? 

The question clung to her mind in the brief moments of awareness.

Why had Andromache not found her yet? 

Together, until the end, she had said, the sounds of her screams ringing in Quynh’s ears against the oppressive silence of the rushing ocean. 

Quynh had broken her thumbs to slip them free of her shackles, kissing Andromache to silence her yelp of pain, swallowing down the noise as her teeth fastened onto her lower lip. They only had a few moments — the guard moved away from their cell door, their torturers out of sight and preparing for their next death — and Quynh hadn’t wanted to waste a second, slipping her necklace from around her neck and pressing the metal, still warm, onto Andromache’s chest. 

“A reminder,” she had called it, kissing Andromache to silence any questions, then the moment was over.

It was a hollow in her chest now.

Quynh died, and she died, and she died. Hours, months, years passed as sea water filled her lungs and drove her deeper and deeper into the endless, choking dark.

She couldn’t pinpoint the moment when her love for Andromache — the love that had sustained her for millenia, had been her guiding star in her darkest nights, that had given her hope when they were separated and gasping back into life hoping that the other would be with them — turned to hate. 

Quynh hated Andromache.

She abandoned her in the bottom of the ocean. Quynh was trapped in an iron tomb, alone and in the dark, and where was Andromache? What use was the promises they had made, words whispered into heated skin, between stolen kisses in the heat of battle, or on lazy days where the entirety of human existence stretched ahead of them, if Andromache left her alone to die?

Quynh screamed her rage to the uncaring sea, choking and dying faster in her fury.

Then, she saw  _ him _ .

Blue coat stained red with his blood, a hole in his chest that healed even as he pressed trembling hands to his wound. She could feel the heat of the sun on her skin, forgotten after so long in the cold, and she screamed, and screamed and screamed. The man died again and again, and he looked at Quynh. He saw her.

Quynh slammed her hands against her coffin with renewed fury, again and again and again. She had to get out. She would get out. 

And when she did, Andromache would pay for abandoning her.

**Author's Note:**

> [ My Tumblr!](https://inkformyblood.tumblr.com) Requests are always welcome!  
> 


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